


mercy is a shade of blue

by birdcat



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Argentina, Canon Compliant, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Timeskip, bluefic, leading-edge fanfiction technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26222809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdcat/pseuds/birdcat
Summary: Hajime returned to him knowing nothing. Feeling, only. A bird that flies north.(Hajime comes to Argentina eight years late. But mercy is perennial.)
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 72
Kudos: 529





	mercy is a shade of blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Valkyree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valkyree/gifts).



> quick note -- if you're on dark mode, the formatting looks odd. feel free to switch to light mode for the ~full experience~, or hit the "hide creator style" button to read without the formatting.

_You have been there since I was born, and I don’t know a world where you don’t exist, because you were born earlier, waiting for me._

_Gusari_

_“Ultramarine Photograph”_

Oikawa is sky blue, first. The simple kind, shot-through with sun, a blue so bright it’s warm. The first color a child learns to name.

Oikawa stands over him, outlined against that sky-blue, his shadow a pool drawn over Hajime. The edges of him are bright enough that when Hajime looks up and tries to make out his face, all he gets is a dim graininess, the suggestion of a smile haloed in blister-bright. In the memory, they’re kids.

“What’cha doin’?”

It’s morning. Hajime is covered in dirt, his knees and hands in the grass, laser-focused. It’s spring or half-summer, and the earth is wet and cool. Between the crooked garden beds in Hajime’s front yard, there are little ants, chubby and red-bodied, and ground beetles the iridescent color of rosin. A jar sits beside him, stuffed with leaves.

“Getting bugs.”

“Huh.” Oikawa pauses, thoughtful. “Bugs are gross.”

In the memory, Hajime remembers annoyance. He remembers looking up, and seeing Oikawa there above him, his lips twisted into a pout. The sky spreads itself out around him. The memory shimmers at the edges. The air swirls warm. It’s a Sunday.

“That’s dumb,” Hajime says. And then, “D’you wanna see one?”

Oikawa’s eyes go wide, but in the next film-frame of memory he’s crouching before Hajime, nodding at the jar in his hands. Hajime sticks a careful finger between the leaves, pulls it out when he feels little legs tickling up his skin. “Here.”

It’s a ground beetle, rust-orange, flashing white in the sun. Oikawa’s pout has vanished, and when Hajime holds the bug closer to his face, he doesn’t shift back. His eyes cross, just a little, as he stares at it. The beetle’s antennae pinwheel, and it crawls over Hajime’s knuckle, onto his forefinger.

“Does it sting?”

Hajime frowns. “No. Beetles don’t sting.”

“Huh.” Oikawa looks up, and behind the insect his expression comes into focus. Hajime isn’t old enough at the time to know what that look means. He’ll know, later, that Oikawa is telling him that he likes it, that his bright eyes are asking Hajime to talk. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Hajime says. Then he lifts his hand, because the beetle has begun to buzz against his skin. They both lean back and watch as it lifts off, and wobbles in the air above Hajime’s finger, a buoy on the surface of the ocean. He keeps his finger held out. They both hold their breath.

And then the bug darts upward, and vanishes into the blue-glaze of the sky.

Hajime says, “They’ve never stung me.”

  
  


()()()

  
  


Oikawa’s apartment in San Juan is sand-white. The air is hot enough to sting. There’s a river in this city, and a wide plaza paved with smooth sun-polished stones, and the imprecise suggestion of the Andes on the horizon. You stand in the heart of it, and feel the continent of South America sprawled out around you on all sides, ancient, and immovable. The sky is blue here.

Hajime stands outside Oikawa’s apartment building, the shadow of which is a pool, drawn over him. A suitcase sits at his side, a backpack dangles from his shoulders. He’s noted already, from a distant place, that he has long since begun grasping at fine details, trying to put together an image of Oikawa’s life: the street is quiet, maybe Oikawa doesn’t like to be awoken by the sounds of traffic; it’s a duplex, maybe he gets along with his neighbors, cooks dinner with them on Sundays; beside a scraggly pot of flowers there’s a beach towel billowing from the railing of one of the balconies, maybe he swims at the river.

Hajime is too strung-out, too buzzed with unease to scorn himself for it. That half-image of Oikawa’s life, like the land itself, feels monolithic and foreign, like it belongs to everyone but him. A secret that he was not let in on. Hajime fumbles with the map he brought, stuffs it back into his pocket; he hadn’t bothered trying to use his phone, didn’t want to fuss over international coverage. It seems stupid, trivial now. He grabs his suitcase, listens to the click-click-click of its wheels over the cobblestone as he approaches the door, reminds himself what he is doing. What he is doing. Oikawa had told him to use the leftmost buzzer, and to press the button again if it doesn’t work. _Sometimes it sticks._

Hajime steadies himself before the door, and buries a knuckle in the button. Somewhere far off, a buzzing noise. A secret that he is being let in on.

  
  


When Oikawa appears in the doorway, he’s wearing an old threadbare t-shirt, and blue sweatpants cuffed to the ankle. There’s a toothbrush in his mouth. His hair is bed-mussed, lopsided, wavy down to his forehead. He is the image of brazen comfort, of towering height, he was always so— he was always so tall. Has he gotten taller? He’s gotten more tan, his arms— 

“Hey,” Oikawa says, and it’s so intentionally casual that Hajime nearly flinches. And then, a smile, the toothbrush pulled out of his mouth. “Sorry, I just woke up.”

“S’alright,” Hajime says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He stares, dumb. _Sorry, I just woke up._ Is this how it was fated to be? Oikawa has just woken up, in his apartment, in San Juan, Argentina, where he lives, where he wears sweatpants and house slippers and brushes his teeth in the morning as he comes downstairs. Where he has lived for nearly a decade. Where he is staring at Hajime. Reality shimmers. Maybe, in this second, there is nothing Hajime can be but stupid.

And then Hajime searches for words, and falters, and feels the swoop of embarrassment on a seconds-delay, the stunned look on his own face. He pushes against the feeling, because the feeling is useless, this is what he told himself he wasn’t going to do. He is here for a reason. The purpose seizes him again. Oikawa had told him he could come in the morning. _I won’t be able to make it to the airport, I’ll have practice the night before, but you’re welcome to—_

“Come in,” Oikawa says.

And Hajime stills, moves—

_What has it been, eight years?_

Hajime holds his breath as he steps over the threshold.

  
  


()()()

  
  


When they’re eighteen, Tooru is a brilliant shade of ocean-glare. _I’m moving to Argentina, Iwa-chan._ And Hajime rolls over on his stomach, and huffs, because it’s the hundredth time. _I know, Oikawa._

Graduation is in a week, and Tooru’s drunk on fate. _I’m going to have an apartment by the beach. The kind where the shutters are a different color than the walls. Like, blue on yellow. I think they’re gonna be blue on yellow. Or white. And I’ll be able to throw them open dramatically each morning and stare out over the street, and the old ladies will see me smiling and think I’m so charming— And, oh, and I’m going to cover the whole balcony with plants. You won’t even be able to see anything, because—_

_Have you ever had a houseplant that didn’t die within a week?_

_Mean! Yes I have!_

He’d decided a month ago that he was going to take up Blanco’s offer. It had cracked something open, pulled him out of his anguish, sent his mind wheeling over the Pacific and onto Argentina’s shores. This is a rare, private version of him, the one that’s still eager to the point of silliness, the bright-eyed boy gasping in awe at a V-League match on TV, the one who chews on hoodie strings, the one dragging Hajime by the collar of his shirt to look at the _Super Sentai_ action figure in the store window, pummeling him in the stomach when he pretends he thinks it’s lame. The one who is eighteen and blithe, sprawled out in Hajime’s backyard, uniform shirt untucked, drawing the blueprint of his future into the sky.

He leaves in six weeks.

_I’m going to call you and make you listen to me speak Spanish. Even when I’m bad at it—which actually, I won’t be, so never mind. And I’ll send you pictures of all the food I eat. And pictures of the beach, but only if you promise not to get jealous._

_Y’know, Irvine’s got a beach, too._

Oikawa beams at him. _But when you come visit me, you’ll have to admit that my beach is better, or else I’ll make you sleep on the floor._

The back of Hajime’s neck stings.

_Oh, and the ocean is going to look great on me._ Oikawa pauses, stretches his arms up over his head, laughs to himself. Like the world is his. _Do you know what that salt water is going to do to my hair? I’m going to be devastating._

Tooru’s smiling at the sky, when Hajime looks to him. Hajime pauses a moment.

_Yeah, I’m sure you are._

  
  


()()()

  
  


There’s no ocean in San Juan. But it doesn’t matter.

Oikawa’s kitchen is odd. It’s one of those things that Hajime has imagined enough times that no version of it would look normal to him. There are too many half-exposed images of different versions of it in Hajime’s head for this one, in all its stubborn finality, to be anything other than a shock. It’s sun-bright, and tidier than most of the imagined ones, with little more than a bowl of fruit on the counter, a couple receipts, opened mail. The kitchen of someone who knows what they need from it. There’s a full wine rack nestled up against the backsplash. An espresso machine.

Oikawa breezes past him, and shoots him a smile as he heads for the sink, and leans over it to spit out his toothpaste. “You can put your stuff anywhere you want.”

“You drink coffee?”

Oikawa’s looks up over his shoulder, eyes wide. The sink continues to hiss. “Yeah,” he says, and then the espresso machine seems to dawn on him, and he smiles again. “Oh, that thing, yeah.” He shuts off the faucet, taps his toothbrush to flick the water off of it. “I got that as a gift from Matias a couple years ago.”

_Matias?_ Hajime instantly wants to ask. But Oikawa had presented the name like the most obvious thing in the world, and whatever spell that is, Hajime doesn’t want to break it. It’s another one of the hundred things Hajime doesn’t know, like the fact that somewhere between the years 2013 and 2021, Oikawa began drinking coffee. And that his kitchen is polished and bright, and that he has a wine collection, and he’s unafraid to spit his toothpaste into whichever sink. And that the syllables of a name like _Matias_ are now slanted and fluid in his mouth. And that he wears blue house slippers, and that he’s now shuffling around in them like a kid as he half-smiles and ducks away into what Hajime can only guess is the bathroom, with an offhand _I’ll be right back._

Hajime stands there with his backpack and his suitcase, in his board shorts, stupid. It’s too much to confront all at once. It’s— what? The bathroom door clicks shut, Hajime is left alone with his terror, and he stares up at the ceiling, as if that will tell him. Eight years’ worth of things?

An ocean of things. An apartment full of them. A lifetime. In their presence Hajime is miniscule.

But—and Hajime’s stomach lurches—he’s _here._ Hajime sets his backpack down with a _thud,_ turns around, and faces the living room. He feels the shaking in his own hands. It’s sun-washed, yellow-curtained, patterned blankets thrown over a low couch, a wide coffee table decorated with books and abandoned mugs. The carpet is thick beneath Hajime’s feet when he steps onto it, the table solid when he taps it, a quiet assurance that it’s real. On its edge rests a novel, and Hajime doesn’t let himself touch it, but he stares at it long enough to read its cover and feels somehow like a bandit when he does. _Reivindicación del conde don Julián._ It’s stained with mug rings. There’s a bookmark near the back.

Hajime stands back up feeling electric. And the apartment itself is small, and the ceiling is low, but all of it feels narrow in an intimate way. Like it contains everything it needs and nothing else. It is exactly none of the languid disarray of Oikawa’s youth, and Hajime is suddenly ridiculous for expecting any of it. He stands in the center of the living room and is flooded with a dozen half-exposed images of Oikawa, here; Oikawa sprawled out on the couch, face buried in that book, Oikawa bent over the espresso machine, Oikawa and his friends leaving wine glasses on the table, on the railing out on the balcony— 

Hajime stops when he realizes. _The balcony._ The far wall is a sliding glass door. It’s been left ajar, and behind it a warm Argentinian morning is taking place. He’s at the threshold, stepping through it, before he knows what he’s doing.

He hadn’t thought about it, earlier, when he was standing on the street—And, yes, the beach towel is Oikawa’s, and so is the scraggly potted plant, which Hajime nearly laughs at. _They never make it more than a week—_ But he hadn’t noticed before, and now he wants to, so Hajime turns around at the railing, grips its wrought-iron warmth, and faces the apartment.

Up and to the left there’s a window, and the shutters are— blue. Blue on sand-white, narrow slotted rectangles that frame the window.

They’re blue. Hajime beams.

His few silent moments are interrupted when Oikawa’s form appears through the door, again. At first he’s just a silhouette outlined against the kitchen, but slowly he nears, and Hajime watches him the whole way.

“The shutters,” Hajime says, as soon as Oikawa ducks his head through the doorway. He hears the smile in his own voice. He’s suddenly fearless, drunk on fate, immune to the unease on Oikawa’s face, and the terror that had gripped him moments ago. He’s here. He’s here. Here, and the shutters are blue.

“Huh?” Oikawa quirks an eyebrow. He’s wearing a different t-shirt, now, and he’s run a comb through his hair. He’s got to be taller, somehow.

“They’re blue.”

_I think they’re gonna be blue on yellow. Or white._

Oikawa steps onto the balcony, and slides the potted plant out of the way to lean into the railing beside Hajime. He follows his gaze to the side of the apartment, and then to the window. “The shutters?”

“Just like you said they’d be.”

Oikawa looks to him. And in the next instant he’s Tooru, eighteen years old, lips parted in surprise, because suddenly he remembers, too.

  
  


()()()

  
  


When they’re thirteen, Tooru is cobalt, beginning to bruise at the edges. The comforter on his bed is that same color, and the walls of his room, too, and so is the shadow that the ceiling fan whips over the moulding at the top of the doorway. That shadow pinwheels, pinwheels, and Hajime watches it, lets it blur, listens to the sweet hushed noise of Tooru’s voice beside him. It’s July, high summer, the heady wash of a free afternoon. Hajime is sprawled out on Tooru’s bed with his _Super Sentai_ shirt hiked up over his stomach and his head tilted back, just-barely off of the mattress, and in his vision Tooru is out of focus and upside-down at the mirror hung on his wall.

“—and Hattori-chan from 9B said that Fujiwara-chan from 9A thinks so too, so—” 

“Mmph.”

Tooru slides the comb through his hair again, tilts his head this way and that. They’ve been here since lunch, Tooru chatting, Hajime listening, half-asleep. Now Tooru pauses, goes still with the comb in the air, doesn’t say whatever he was about to say. Hajime pulls his gaze from the doorway to watch Tooru’s reflection frown. “Hmph. This one part won’t lay flat.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have slept on it like that.”

“ _Iwa-chan!_ ” Tooru is making a stupid face in the mirror, which looks even stupider upside-down. Hajime feels the warm tingle of blood in his head. “That’s _so_ mean. This is hard. Not everyone has easy hair like you.”

“Easy hair?”

Tooru gestures grandly with the comb. “Some of us have to _do_ our hair, yours always just looks the same.”

“No one is making you do you hair.”

“ _Iwa-chan—”_

And the memory is a little frayed at the corners, grainy, but this point Hajime knows it already. It’s easy to prod Tooru, but the knowing is a weight that sits low in his spine, and he shifts on the bed to push against it. Somewhere between their second and third year of middle school Tooru had figured out that he was better-looking than most of their peers, and had bought a weird-looking comb for his hair, and suddenly stopped wearing the graphic t-shirts that he and Hajime had shared throughout late childhood. Hajime had watched from a distance as it settled over him slowly, and then all at once. Tooru came into school each day with his hair more perfectly styled, his uniform’s tie more carefully knotted; the girls who had always talked to him suddenly began talking to him more, with more intent, in larger groups. He showed up late to practice with an uncanny grin on his face because _Hattori-chan from 9B_ had held him up. The first confession letter, from a girl from 9C, came a week later, and the afternoon he’d gotten it he’d stumbled through Hajime’s back door and slipped the open envelope into his hands, laughing. Hajime had held it like a bomb.

And Hajime had seen how it had puzzled him, at the very beginning, before he knew what was going on. It had been like watching a cat tap the surface of water with its paw. The blank look in his eyes when a girl came to his desk between classes and lingered, the outright confusion at being glowered at by other boys. And then one day, after enough stares, the realization snapped— _Wait, do you think I’m handsome, Iwa-chan?—_ and his look of confusion transformed into wonder. It was like a new power he had at his fingertips, a new game. Hajime saw the way he looked at himself in the mirror. Something he could sharpen, no different than the swing behind his serve.

Hajime had known about it all along.

“I’m just saying that if you didn’t spend an hour on your hair, you would be fine.” The words are weak, half-hearted. Hajime knows they only scratch the brittle surface of his own feeling. “No one would die, Shittykawa.”

Tooru sets the comb down with a _thwack,_ and Hajime jerks his eyes over. Tooru is scowling at him in the mirror. “Mean, Iwa-chan. What if I like doing my hair?”

Hajime’s head has been tipped back for long enough that warm spots swim at the edges of his vision. He exhales, then sits up all at once, and for a second he can hear nothing but the rush of blood in his ears. When he slides off of the bed and repositions himself on the floor, Tooru’s eyes follow him. He tips his head back against the bedframe, makes Tooru listen to his silence a moment longer. He ignores the pinching in his gut. He cannot help but think of eight-year-old Tooru, and twelve-year-old Tooru, who didn’t care if he walked around all day with his hair sticking out at all angles. Thirteen-year-old Tooru pouts down at him. “You don’t like doing your hair.”

Tooru’s eyebrows draw together. And beneath Hajime’s unease, there’s a twist of satisfaction there, like he’s caught him at something wrong. “ _Mean, Iwa-chan!_ What do you think I—”

But then Hajime— Hajime’s done with him, and his limbs are tingling with a numb sort of discomfort, and he’s up off the ground, hands out, diving for Tooru’s head. “ _Hey—”_

And Hajime’s hands make it, and Tooru’s protesting, trying to push him away, grabbing at his wrists, and his chair rolls back until it taps and stills against his desk. But Hajime has his fingers in Tooru’s hair, and is ruffling it into disaster; he’s leaning over him, laughing, watching the look of fury on his face grow redder. There’s another twist of satisfaction there. Much deeper, heady, even, when Hajime finally feels Tooru relent beneath his touch. Tooru’s hands go slack around his wrists, he leans back, kicks his legs out, glowers up at Hajime through his forearms. “Iwa-chan,” he huffs, “you’re _so_ unfair.”

Hajime draws his hands away, and takes a step back. Tooru immediately folds his arms over his chest and begins saying something Hajime doesn’t really listen to, and he looks ridiculous like that, sprawled out in a desk chair, hair mussed into a whirlwind atop his head, a pout all over his face— 

And he looks like how he did, when they were kids.

Hair a disaster, nose turning pink because he’s so mad. Trying, with all his might, not to laugh at Hajime.

Something in Hajime lurches. _When they were kids_ , sure, he thinks, but they’re both still so young; Hajime suddenly _feels_ his youngness, from the backs of his arms down to the balls of his feet, feels it hanging around him in the cotton fabric of his _Super Sentai_ t-shirt, an ugly red thing two sizes too large for either of them. It seems to double in weight all at once; it was Tooru’s shirt, first, but a few months ago he’d suddenly refused to wear it any longer. _It’s a bit childish, don’cha think, Iwa-chan?_

And Hajime had scowled at him, and fired back with _I don’t care, I’ll wear it,_ and railed against the feeling that Tooru was suddenly very, very far away.

_Don’t go lost on me._

“—Hello? Earth to Iwa-chan? Are you listening to me?”

But he’s not far away, Hajime thinks mildly, he’s right here. In his bedroom. Wearing a stupid button-down that’s too fancy to look reasonable, but his hair is messed up like it’s supposed to be, and he’s frowning just like he did when they were four, and eight, and twelve, and his cheeks are a bright red, and he’s shuffling forward awkwardly in his desk chair to kick Hajime in the shin, and his new terrible messed-up hair is flopping wildy over his forehead, and suddenly that’s the funniest thing Hajime has ever seen, and he’s doubled-over in laughter before he can even hear himself. _What’s so funny?_ Tooru’s voice comes from far away. _What are you laughing at?_

He’s close, now, because Hajime’s bent over; Hajime wraps his arms around him.

And Tooru is sitting and it’s a terrible angle for a hug, which doesn’t matter, because Hajime’s still hiccuping laughter against his shoulder. Tooru lifts his arms and wraps them around Hajime’s torso. A familiar warmth. Like— like when they were kids.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m never gonna let you do your hair again,” Hajime says. It’s the funniest thing he’s ever said. And he means it. He’s not going to let Oikawa trip into adulthood without him. _Don’t go lost on me._ “I’m gonna mess it up.”

“You’re weird, Iwa-chan.”

Hajime laughs. All he can see is the cobalt-blue of Tooru’s bedroom wall, the blurry suggestion of Tooru’s hair against his cheek. He’s never letting him go. “Every time. I’m gonna mess it up every time.” 

  
  


()()()

  
  


When they’re twenty-two, Oikawa is a blue so pale it’s almost white.

Eventually Hajime loses track of the number of times they’ve said they’re going to make it work out. _Hey, so I’ve got a string of exhibition matches once the postseason ends in April, but if your internship works out, I might be able to get up to Irvine sometime in May, if my coach—_

It’s been four years, and it’s never worked out.

It’s nothing like what they said it was going to be. Which is, as Hajime is capable of understanding from his third-story walkup just outside of Irvine’s campus, with a lease in his name and a diploma on his wall, twenty-two and getting older, unsurprising. It’s more the thought of disappointment than it is disappointment itself. Disappointment diffused over time, until it’s just a thin hum, the background noise that Hajime flicks on to go to sleep. It’s more the knowledge that his eighteen-year-old self would be wounded at the sight of this version of the future, and then wounded again, deeper, at the realization that Hajime is okay with it.

That he’s— okay, with it.

It’s been four years, and Oikawa’s great at Spanish, Hajime is pretty sure. He plays for San Juan, which is a nice city, Hajime is pretty sure; in his mind it’s a conglomeration of grainy, faded images, things Hajime has never seen in person, the years-old pictures Oikawa had sent him of the river, the sun-baked square, the exterior of this then-apartment, because he’s since moved, Hajime is pretty sure. But he hasn’t gotten any pictures of the new one, and their text conversation sits deep in Hajime’s phone, buried beneath a dozen others. _I promise it looks even better in person, Iwa-chan, and you’ll just have to agree with me when you come,_ Oikawa had said, years, months ago, over the phone, back when they used to do that, too.

All of it paints their conversations as teenagers in a hundred washed-out shades of naivete. Stupidity, even. There is no one who can hold onto feeling for that long, Hajime thinks. It was so like Oikawa to think that they were going to, that they were going to stretch, warp the world to their will, to bend time back on itself, make their friendship work because they were special; it was so like Hajime to believe him. Grad school stands between them like a monolith, Oikawa’s practice schedule does not end, that they are not special and never were reveals itself without ceremony. Adulthood swallows both of them like a wave, pulls, parts.

And there’s no way to catalog the descent, exactly, but Hajime tries anyways. He can picture it before himself like a spreadsheet, one of the endless tables of numbers he uses in the lab, a perfect backlog of their slow, certain departure from one another. He could measure it in the number of calls dropped, or the number of calls not picked up, the number of miles they say they’re going to travel and then don’t, a whole column for the number of times he’s heard Oikawa’s voice cut away over the phone because he was laughing at something someone else had said. A record of the way Spanish has begun to sound in his mouth, more slanted, more sure. The number of mornings Hajime has spent on his balcony, awake earlier than he means to be, staring into the blue-glaze of the Californian sky, thinking of nothing at all.

  
  


()()()

  
  


They dance around one another. A part of Hajime sings, victorious; most of him shrinks in fear. Hajime is in Oikawa’s apartment, Oikawa does not know what to do with him. Hajime doesn’t know what to do with himself. Knows, only, I am here, I am here, I am here.

It’s something like 9,000 kilometers between Irvine and San Juan. And Hajime has— Hajime has traveled all of them, in order to stand in Oikawa’s living room, grip the back of the couch, and stare frantic-hearted and blank-faced at Oikawa’s fifth attempt to get the espresso machine to work. _Y’know, it’s been a while since I used this, but since you’re interested in the coffee—_ And Hajime had tried and failed to explain that he wasn’t, actually, he doesn’t drink coffee, but Oikawa was already set on it, caught up in some cycling tide of politeness or needing something to do, and Hajime had watched helplessly as he began clipping and unclipping some complicated-looking contraption from it over and over again. Hajime was left useless.

They’d stood out on the balcony and talked about the shutters not an hour ago. It had petered out into an odd, smothered exchange about high school that felt mostly like suffocating. Maybe it’s exactly what Hajime deserves, for coming here like this, thrusting this upon the both of them. He thrums like a live wire. His suitcase and backpack sit in the corner, still, staring at him; Oikawa had told him again that he was free to put his things wherever he wanted, but Hajime still hadn’t laid eyes on any part of the apartment that wasn’t the kitchen or the living room, and had found himself rooted to the spot the instant Oikawa began fussing with the espresso machine. It was stupid, of Hajime, to do this. To think that it was going to be anything other than painful. Oikawa flips a switch on the machine, flips it back, turns to look at Hajime and then aborts the motion halfway, so that Hajime only catches the corner of his eye.

Hajime pushes that fear down. Bites against it. He’s here for a reason.

“Hey, why don’t we—” Hajime re-grips the back of the couch and smiles a wry, private smile. His skin is numb where it meets fabric. He’d thought that maybe Oikawa would offer to take them to lunch. Take him around the city. Introduce him to the neighbors. Show him around his team’s gym, let him hit a toss or two. Hajime had played the film reel on loop between his takeoff and landing. But now that’s stupid, again, and of course it wouldn’t be that easy, and now the words are slow in his mouth, and he has no fucking clue what he’s doing here, letting himself in on this secret by force. It’s not fair to— It’s not fair to Oikawa. Who has jerked his head around and is staring at him, wide- and deer-eyed. “Why don’t we go out and—”

“Wait.” The look on Oikawa’s face is frenzied, suddenly. Cold with urgency. “Have you ever had Argentinian wine?”

“What?”

“Why don’t we go to a vineyard?”

And it’s sudden. And strange. And— 

“Sure.” And good.

  
  


()()()

  
  


When they’re fourteen, Tooru is a caustic sort of blue, navy that coils into black.

Hajime catches Tooru’s wrist the split-second before he hits Kageyama. Tooru’s movement was so whole, so sure, that there must be a version of him somewhere that made it. Hajime tightens his grip around Tooru’s arm, watches a bead of sweat slip between his blown-wide eyes. Not this version, Hajime thinks. Not this version.

Kageyama disappears without protesting. Hajime hopes, uselessly, that he doesn’t realize what just happened, what almost just happened to him. And Tooru listens, when Hajime screams at him. He goes almost limp when Hajime grabs his t-shirt, a doll of himself, so terrified and numbed by the scale of his own anger that he’s fully disarmed, harmless. And Hajime has to scream at him anyways. Who would he be if he didn’t? Hajime grabs Tooru by the shirt and thrashes him again. _Are you listening to me, Shittykawa, do you realize—_

And this part of the memory is clear: the feeling comes only later. Hajime releases him like a weight loosed, and they depart wordlessly, and Tooru makes it all the way to the locker room before he spills over. He's at the far end of the room, silently gathering his things, when he goes still; Hajime goes from half-watching him to watching him. Hajime can still feel Tooru's wrist in his hand, as if it's still there, the crescent-shape of skin contact, the stinging force that would have met Kageyama's cheek instead. The thought is a frigid, dense force. Hajime now watches from a distance as Tooru’s face crumples, and he lets his bag fall to the floor. Feels his chest ring with something hollow as Tooru finally realizes, minutes late, what he almost just did.

And Hajime's beside him before he has a chance to speak. When a tidal surge of fondness crests, Hajime doesn't hold against it, cannot. Being mad at him anymore—the thought of being mad at him anymore is impossible, absurd, cruel, and all at once Hajime doesn’t know how he did it. He takes Tooru's wrists in his hands, lets Tooru's head tip, careen, fall against his shoulder. Tooru is weak, malleable. Hajime backs up, backs Tooru up, until the locker is solid and cool against his back. _S'alright_ , he wants to say, _S'alright, Tooru,_ but Tooru is something precarious and fragile in his palms, and the words are too tight in his throat to come out. Tooru stands bowed against him, silent and shuddering, and it's only when dampness begins to stain Hajime's t-shirt that Hajime realizes that he’s crying.

It has been weeks, months since Hajime noticed. There was a rheumy, liquid terror in Tooru's eyes whenever he looked at Kageyama. Like Tooru was a vessel overfull, and Kageyama’s slightest movement would spill him out. Kageyama had begun to stand taller on the court, place perfect sets in the air like chess pieces, and their coaches’ smiles, directed at him, had begun to stretch wider. Today, Tooru had been switched out for him in the middle of the second set. _It was just to give you a chance to cool off, Shittykawa—_ But afterwards Kageyama, starry-eyed and sweet, had asked Tooru to teach him how to jump serve. Hajime had heard the white noise of Tooru’s fury, careening in through the ceiling.

Tooru, overfull, had finally tipped.

Whatever it is— Hajime leans back into the locker, presses his shoulder blades into the metal; Tooru clutches at the cotton of his t-shirt, and pants again, and lets his forehead slip further down Hajime’s chest. Whatever it is, Hajime can just barely grasp at. He struggles to imagine it. The kind of terror that keeps Tooru in the gym until sunset each evening, slamming serves into the ground. The kind of terror that put a brace around his knee. The kind of terror that sits watery in his eyes, glints in the light. The kind that turns his trembling hands into fists, and sends them launching at Kageyama’s face.

Hajime moves a hand up and presses it against the warmth of Tooru’s neck, where his hair curls damp. In this moment it is impossible that such a yielding thing could be violent. And still he’s hot enough in Hajime’s arms to scald, overbright, oversharp, so finely whetted by the force of his own fear that to touch him stings. He fears the— Hajime shuts his eyes and tries to imagine it, pull it out of the abstract— He fears being replaced. He fears the sight of another setter. Hajime’s fingers curl against Tooru’s neck. He fears not making it. 

Hajime pulls him in tighter. Tooru’s regret is a physical thing beneath his skin, barbed; Hajime, helpless, leans into him anyways. There is no way to get close enough, there is no way to smother, to soothe the fear from him, there is no touch in the world sweet enough to convince him of his worth. Hajime still tries. He draws circles against Tooru’s back, up his neck, slides his fingers into his hair. The dull twisting beneath his sternum won’t let him do anything else. And when Hajime tugs him nearer, Tooru reaches around him until he’s wrapped up in him entirely, a solid, warm weight, trembling like an animal. Hajime presses his cheek against the crown of Tooru’s head, and stares into the blue-black of his eyelids. He’s going to will him whole.

Then the hands that almost struck Kageyama run up Hajime’s back, and settle gently against the nape of his neck. And Hajime aches, aches, because has never felt anything softer.

  
  


()()()

  
  


When they’re twenty-five, Oikawa is not blue; he is not there. Hajime moves off of campus in his third year of grad school, gets an apartment with two old friends. studies until midnight every night, sleeps with one woman and two men in the first month, and thinks of nothing at all.

Time spins on its axis. He speaks only English for weeks at a time, and when he calls his mother his native language first has to struggle out of him. Oikawa slips from memory into memory-of-a-memory. Their text conversation is buried deep enough in Hajime’s phone to ossify. The thin hum of disappointment is so old that any reminders of it are laughable, and Hajime’s life in California is so complicated and so wide in scale that those reminders eventually vanish entirely. He thinks himself free.

But the years are a whetstone, and the feeling sharpens itself against it, silent, where Hajime cannot see. And then stings— sudden, cruel, stunningly whole.

  
  


When they’re twenty-five, Oikawa is blue again. Is teal, gossamer, the tectonic force of the sea lurching back into motion, his voice over the phone a clean fissure through reality. Hajime stands in the center of his third-story walkup and watches the world re-birth itself around him; it has been seven years. _Hey, Iwaizumi, I’ve got a month off, and, uh— My sister’s actually in Pasadena these days, and I’m coming up to visit her, and I was wondering if you’d want me to swing by._

Hajime knows that there are some kinds of muscle memory that you cannot forget. The kind that keeps his serve flying as clear and true as it was when he was eighteen. The kind that sees him punching his American friends’ shoulders, ruffling their hair, double-knotting his shoelaces as if he’s about to step onto a court.

The kind that leaves him gasping, clutching the edge of his kitchen counter when Oikawa’s voice comes ringing through his phone, because all at once that lifetime’s worth of emotion is his again. There is some part of him, some animal, primordial part of him that is never going to be able to forget how he feels for Oikawa; in this moment that part of him tears open and swells skyward until it is all of him, and there is no terror in the world like the hot, hot, hot-white scald of being unfree.

It is stunning, how easily those years and miles of defense he’s put between them are rendered useless, how they were never any real defense at all. How easy it is for him to stand on one end of the phone line and picture Oikawa at the other, sprawled out somewhere, sun-branded, wearing the distance between them like laurels, telling him, I was wondering if you’d want me to swing by. How Hajime still hurts for him, a pulsing marrow-ache, like it was yesterday.

It’s so viciously cruel, all of it somehow, and Hajime’s anger is sudden and senseless. He has to hold still and float back down before he can even begin coaxing words into shape; when he does, it has already been far too long, and the phone is humming nothingness into his ear, and the base of his palm is scored pink with the counter’s squared edge. There are a hundred things he does not let himself ask: _Do you realize what you’re doing? Do you realize how long it’s been? Are you serious? How can you do this?_ That Oikawa continues— that Oikawa continues to exist without him is hateful. That Oikawa continues to exist without him and then suggests he return to him when it hurts this much is hateful, hateful, hateful and all Hajime can hear is the hateful roil of blood in his ears, the numbing realization that he has not been free, no, this whole time, he was never free of this feeling, not for a minute, not for a breath.

 _I don’t—_ Hajime struggles out, finally. Somewhere, his eighteen-year-old self is watching, and Hajime is about to wound him. He can’t even pretend to hesitate, to feel a flicker of remorse. _Let me get back to you on that, Oikawa._

Hajime kills the call.

  
  


()()()

  
  


The vineyard is an hour from the city. Oikawa doesn’t offer him any sort of explanation until they’re well into it, and that silence is exactly what Hajime deserves. Is perhaps not enough.

Hajime is left to watch him, and piece the story together, and he is certain that it’s what Oikawa wants him to do. Oikawa comes alive, here, is suddenly in control. _Look at me,_ his hand says, when he raises it in greeting as they pass through the vineyard gates, commanding, certain, familiar with the man who smiles back at them. Then they’re wading through the patches of sunlight beneath a sunken awning, and Oikawa’s leading him as they wind around posts, under branches, between small buildings, and there are suddenly a dozen people here who Oikawa knows. _Look at me_ , says Oikawa’s voice, because there are suddenly a dozen words of Spanish coming out of his mouth, and Hajime is helpless against the wave of vertigo, helpless but to stand there as Oikawa introduces him to them in a language Hajime doesn’t understand. _Look at me,_ says the set of Oikawa’s shoulders, once they’re out, alone, two dots weaving through the thinly-scored terraces, foliage carded across the hillside in rows of green, green, green, like fingers parting hair. Hajime puts one unsteady foot against the earth, the sun-hulled ancient earth, and then another, and wonders if the scale of it is going to swallow him.

And then, _Look at me,_ says the back of Oikawa’s head, when after a lifetime he finally stops, and waits; Hajime has nothing to do but stare at his outline against the blue backdrop of the heavens. Reality shimmers at its edges.

“This place belongs to an old friend of mine,” he says, finally, into the air’s swirling warmth. When he turns around, the cold urgency in his eyes, from before, is gone. The breeze tugs at the fabric of his shirt. He brushes a palm, waist-height, over the top of a vine. “Matias’ —our libero’s —brother. Their family has owned the property for a couple generations, but he wanted to. . .” Oikawa has a small smile on his lips, and he gestures around vaguely. “Make something of it.”

It’s beautiful. Hajime is convinced it’s the most beautiful place Oikawa could have taken him. It’s all show, all slow rolling hills, the Andes like a threat at the horizon, the sun a cosmic floodlight, the golden-green of the earth terrifyingly vivid beneath Hajime’s feet. And there is nothing for them to do, here, there is only the looking, the watching, the plain unashamed demonstration of where Oikawa is, now. Hajime watches as Oikawa plucks a grape from a vine and places it in his mouth. He is deliberate, breaking eye contact not for a second. _Look at me. Look at this place._ Where Oikawa is, now.

And of course Oikawa is here. Hajime could laugh. The world has never waited for him; he has always had to chase it down. And of course he chases this down, this pool of sun, this private Argentinian vineyard nestled into South America’s spine, where he can stand tall and tan and blithe and whole and unflinching. That he is here of all places is so stunningly obvious that for a moment there are no other versions of him; there was only ever one possibility for Oikawa, one trajectory, and it was this one.

It’s— Hajime falters. This place is a reminder. Oikawa bringing him here is intended, singularly, as a reminder. Oikawa has long since turned to him, and now stares, outlined against that perfect, endless blue. As if to say, _Remember what you did._

_And you’re here, now, you came to see me. So look at this place._

_Look at me._

There was only ever one possibility for Hajime, one trajectory, and it is this one. In which he is helpless. In which he looks.

  
  
  


Oikawa takes him around the rest of the vineyard, Hajime gets to meet Benjamin, Matias’ brother, and something is released. Oikawa no longer looks at him as he did, as they stood in the blank vastness of the terraces, or with the frightening insistence from before. Hajime sits beneath an awning with a glass of wine in his hand that’s too good for him to appreciate, talks to Benjamin about the wine business in English long enough to lose track of time, and watches Oikawa watch him like the whole world is at peace. It is, for a moment; Hajime laughs at something Benjamin said, Oikawa cuts in in rapid Spanish, birds flutter out from the bushes around them, and Hajime could get used to this. Could get used to this.

“They liked you,” Oikawa says, an hour later, as they’re stepping through the gates. There’s a bottle of something incredibly expensive in his hands—Hajime had watched Benjamin try to give it to him, had watched Oikawa laugh and protest in Spanish as he tried to turn him down, the sort of glint in his eye that told Hajime this wasn’t new—and Oikawa keeps looking at it like it’s a trophy. It’s a long walk back to Oikawa’s car; they duck into the warm pool of shadow beneath a low-hanging tree, duck back out.

“You’re not the first person I’ve brought,” Oikawa continues. “They let me treat this place like it’s my own. Sometimes they’re—” he laughs. “A little too generous. I’ve known the family for long enough that it’s only natural, I guess, but— they liked you.”

Hajime catches just a split-second of eye contact, startlingly bright. “I —”

“We should make something, tonight.” Oikawa cuts him off, suddenly forceful. He lifts the bottle. “To go with this.” He’s staring at Hajime, again, unflinching, firm, arrestingly still, the same way he was between the terraces. He doesn’t care about being rude. He doesn’t need to. 

Hajime is reminded. _You’re here. So look._

“Right—”

“And there’s a lot to catch up on.” Oikawa’s walking again, like some important decision has just been made. “I’ve got practice in the morning, and I don’t know if you want to see our gym, but if we—” 

“I do. I’ll come.” It’s Hajime’s turn to cut him off; Oikawa stills, looks. Hajime has never been so sure of anything: “I want to see it all.”

  
  


()()()

  
  


When Hajime is twenty-five, there is no place in the world where the sky isn’t blue. 

It’s been two days since Oikawa called, and told him he was coming to Pasadena, and Hajime hung up on him.

What Hajime did is a shock. He sits at his kitchen island on a Saturday morning and watches his roommates make breakfast and begins laughing, flat-out, sudden, apropos of nothing but the manic tumbling in his chest. There is no way for that shock to come out but laughter. _Let me get back to you on that,_ he’d said to Oikawa, with the fanged, frigid thought that he never would. There is no version of Hajime’s eighteen-year-old self that could have imagined this version of him, this terrible, rotten shock. This was not one of his trajectories; he tore this one out from the wet throat of the universe.

And he can name what he is going to feel before he feels it. It is staring at a cut and knowing the blood before it wells. Hajime gets to spend a week laughing at breakfast with his roommates before the numbness melts off and it’s no longer funny; something fissured, the moment Oikawa’s voice reached his ears, and now the pain swells slowly, determinedly. A years-backlog of what he has not felt, not allowed himself to feel, and now feels. The emotion itself is wrathful at being suffocated for so long. It’s there waiting for him, each day, when he wakes. It’s the first thing to greet him. Good morning; you burn.

That he let it slip for seven years is a crime. That at ages twenty and twenty-one and twenty-two and twenty-three he saw Oikawa’s name on his phone and let the dial tone ring out is a crime. That at age twenty-four he stopped calling Oikawa altogether is a crime. There were a thousand other ways it could have gone—a thousand trajectories, realities in which Hajime simply wrote him a letter, in which Hajime decided on the risk of a plane ticket, in which Hajime took the steps necessary to spend spring break in San Juan instead of Sendai, in which Hajime put just one more ounce of effort towards making it work.

In which Hajime did not lay eyes on the towering scale of his own longing, and decide to flee.

And from his backyard in Sendai, with Oikawa sprawled out beside him, his eighteen-year-old self had been able to see all of those trajectories. Like lines dragged through the grain of the atmosphere, countless ways they could part from each other and then return again; all of those lines true, all of them safe. Hajime now looks into the sky and sees only blue.

Unscored, perfect, barren. Only blue. Blue. Blue. Blue.

And— the world continues to exist around him, uncaring. The world does not stop to flinch at his pain. The sun climbs up into each morning’s lap, the earth pinwheels, clouds swallow themselves and spit themselves out atwinew; behind them, the heavens have begun screaming in new shades. Cobalt, navy, cruelty.

Hajime waits for the day the sky comes up with something else. It never does. Hajime is twenty-five. There is no place in the world where the sky isn’t blue. The sky is always blue. It is always blue. It is always blue.

There is no reminder of him more monstrous, more whole.

  
  


()()()

  
  


He is twenty-five. He still has Oikawa’s phone number.

  
  


_Hey, I’m coming down to Argentina._

_What?_

_My flight is on the twenty-third._

A great silence.

_I just thought I’d let you know. I’m landing in San Juan at 6:20 A.M._

Another silence, a perfect one.

And then— 

_Are you serious?_

_Yeah, I am._

  
  


()()()

  
  


Hajime came to him knowing nothing. Feeling, only. A bird that flies north.

How the rest of their time together unspools is a mystery. Hajime exists in it but cannot say what it does or what forces guide it. Oikawa brings him home from the vineyard; they make something ridiculous for dinner and drink the whole bottle of what Benjamin gave them, and Hajime is a live wire sitting at the kitchen island. He doesn’t know what Oikawa tells him, and knows only that Oikawa tells him _something_ , that they are both here, that Oikawa leans forward with his elbows on the table and tosses a hand in the air in emphasis and pitches his smiling gaze at Hajime like a light-beacon. Hajime sleeps either on the couch or in the guest bedroom that night. He is so drunk on his unexpected success that if he were asked, the next morning, which it had been, he wouldn’t be able to say. At breakfast Oikawa gets the espresso machine to work and laughs; for a second he looks over his shoulder at Hajime, and the world is never so complete.

They go to Oikawa’s gym. Hajime sits high in the gallery of the building, which smells like rubber and warm air, and watches from an incredibly distant place as the years between them make themselves known in a hundred new ways. It doesn’t hurt. It’s a heady wash. Oikawa’s new number is 13, and he has never been so good at what he does, so sure of his footing, so powerful in his serve, so cheerful with his teammates. They’re brilliant, all of them, and Hajime has just enough presence of mind to remind himself that they’re professionals. That Oikawa is a professional. And— Of course he’s here, Hajime thinks helplessly, of course this is it; of course Oikawa stands on the court in a sleeveless blue-yellow jersey and pitches tosses into the air like it’s nothing and shouts in perfect Spanish when his hitters land. Hajime stands bent over the railing. When Oikawa stills, and stares up at him to beam, Hajime’s fists squeak around it.

And for a series of days, the feeling rides against his skin, at the back of his neck. Oikawa does not need to be so kind to him. Oikawa does not need to bring him back to his apartment and sit with him out on the balcony and indulge his questions, or his thoughts, or his very presence. Oikawa does not need to bring him to the market he frequents and introduce him to the old woman who sells him tomatoes, he does not need to show him the river, or the town square, or the roof of his apartment building, or the shady spot outside a cafe where he most likes to sit and read.

Their oldness comes to them in stuttering steps, like that. Oikawa unspools the plot of _The Reivindicación del conde don Julián_ for him under that cafe’s awning, and Hajime studies the crest of his turned cheek and tries to remember the boy who stole his _Super Sentai_ figures and hid them beneath his bed. Tries to remember the one who couldn’t even finish a Murakami novel for a book report in high school. With a hand still held in the air Oikawa turns to him, to make sure that he’s listening, and Hajime can see that boy, again, if only for a second.

“Did you hear a word of what I just said?”

It’s teasing, not angry. Hajime’s limbs go static against his seat; he hasn’t absorbed a single second of _The Reivindicación del conde don Julián_. “No.” He beams.  
Oikawa pauses for a moment, and then seems to decide on something. “ _Mean, Iwa-chan._ ”

And— it’s so old, so perfect. The laughter that comes out of both of them is half-shock, half-delight.

For a series of days, Oikawa is so thorough in ignoring the question of _Why_ that Hajime begins to wonder if it’s there at all. Hajime begins to wonder if— if his showing up here after seven years, uninvited and unannounced, was somehow expected. Oikawa seems so prepared for it; he does not flinch at the gap of years, the thousands of things that Hajime clumsily does not know. There are so many names that Oikawa brings up— all of them curved in his mouth, like _Sebastian,_ and _Alvaro_ , and Oikawa does not tire of explaining to him who they are. _That’s our Libero. That’s my old roommate, he reminds me of you._ He shows Hajime where everything is in his apartment. He helps Hajime pronounce Spanish words. He doesn’t ask Hajime why he showed up. He doesn’t ask Hajime why he hung up on him in California. He doesn’t ask Hajime why he wasn’t strong enough to call him for the past two years. He doesn’t ask when Hajime plans on going home.

All of it is so disarming that Hajime feels constantly out of breath. He stands in the bathroom in Oikawa’s apartment on the fourth evening, and stares at himself in the mirror like a wild animal; he scarcely recognises himself this far into the future. There must be a moment coming, he thinks, where Oikawa snaps, where the facade drops and Oikawa demands to know what Hajime thinks he is doing here. It would be a fair question, and Hajime would be unable to answer it. He knows nothing of the shape of his want, only its impossible, soaring scale. The blown-wide urgency in his eyes. The feeling so ancient and forceful that it left him no choice but to act, now, and ask for forgiveness later. He grips and re-grips the edge of the sink to confirm that it’s real, draws a breath in, lets it loose.

Oikawa’s still on the balcony, when Hajime comes back out. A warm Argentinian evening is taking place. Oikawa has to repeat himself twice from his chair before Hajime collects himself enough to understand what he’s asking—“Another glass?”

“Yeah,” Hajime says, and watches Oikawa’s eyes dart away as he reaches to pour him the rest of what Benjamin gifted them. Hajime idles, stares. They’ve been out on the balcony for hours, a book in Oikawa’s lap, Hajime’s hands in his own, letting time quietly melt away. The evening is so sweet, and he is on a precipice. He is here, here. He watches the wine glass fill up. A vessel overfull. He is such a live-wire that Oikawa could say anything, he realizes, and a flood would spill from him.

Oikawa’s eyes are on him again, and he’s reaching up to hand him the glass. Hajime is overfull, taking it from him. “Are you—”

“Fine,” Hajime says, and smiles with it, until Oikawa smiles back. The chair is cold static against his limbs when he sits down. The silence is odd, and Oikawa must know. Surely the spell is about to break. They’ve been talking pleasantly all evening. Surely Oikawa is about to ask him, _So, what are you doing here, what are you—_

“I like it, when it’s like this,” Oikawa says suddenly. Hajime’s chin jerks up. Oikawa’s book sits in his hands, ignored; he’s got both feet propped up against the base of a bannister, gaze cast out over the horizon. His silence seems to be a prompt.

“Hm?” Even a single syllable is a terror.

“When the—” Oikawa reaches out with a hand, tries to draw something into the horizon. His face is so placid, a half-smile. “When the sky goes like that, in the evening.”

“Like— like what?” Hajime is stupid and slow. The remark is so benign that Hajime reels. He follows Oikawa’s gaze out to the horizon, and immediately draws it back. Something seems to careen towards them from a distance.

“Like . . .” Oikawa needs a moment to consider it. Then he leans back, and points directly above them. “Like, when it’s still bright out, but the sky goes that dark sort of blue.”

Hajime— Hajime is dead silent for a long, long second.

And then the comedy of it crashes over him with violent force, a wave, and he’s laughing before he can even hear himself. His hand finds the railing, because he’s bent forwards in his chair, hiccuping laughter down at his knees so strong it’s almost painful. And Oikawa’s trying to talk to him, then,“What?” he asks, between Hajime’s laughs, and then, “Iwaizumi, what?” someone asks again, from a great distance, and that must be Oikawa. “What, come on Iwaizumi.” And then Oikawa’s laughing too, leaning forward to try and catch his gaze, and Hajime looks up at him watery-eyed, chest heaving, beaming. “What?”

  
  


()()()

  
  


Hajime’s first memory is him, and the sky. He’s thought over the memory enough times that the remembering of it has become a separate entity. He can look back over the axis of his life and remember it, and remember all the other times he’s remembered it, wet pinpoints of light all the way up his youth. They’re at the beach, somewhere, or a hundred feet above the earth. All there is is Oikawa, and blue. His shining cheeks. Hajime is little more than a baby. The sweet, clear rush of atmosphere.

Hajime knows the memory has to be an invention. It's too abstract to be real. And still he’s half-convinced that it was the first thing that happened to him. That when he was born into the world and opened his eyes for the first time, Oikawa was already there, smiling at him, outlined against the clean infinite blue of the sky.

  
  


()()()

  
  


Hajime returned to him knowing nothing. Feeling, only. Stumbling drunkenly forwards through the dark. 

The spell breaks when they’re ankle-deep in the river, in the morning. Hajime deserves it. The river that runs through San Juan is as sleepy as the city itself, and Oikawa knows the sleepiest part of it, a half-hour’s drive outside of the city, where heavy groves of trees bow in silence over the shallows. He’d told Hajime they were going with arresting conviction and gotten into the car like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Hajime hadn’t hesitated in following him, even though he knew the decision had been made and he could see the spell about to break on the horizon. There was no use in holding against it. He’d brought himself here, he had acted, thrust himself upon both of them, and now was the time to beg for forgiveness.

The sheer absurdity of it all becomes a third presence, once they’re well out of the car, and Oikawa is stepping barefoot into the river before him, and then pauses, silent.

Hajime has had the whole car ride to search for the words he needs to say, and in this moment is utterly desolate. It’s a miracle that they’ve gotten this far saying nothing. He can read the expectation on the back of Oikawa’s head, in his posture. The way he doesn’t turn around to look at Hajime, he just stands. Hajime searches for something to comment on. The trees, the air, Oikawa’s shirt— is blue. Laughter catches in Hajime’s throat and dies there.

Hajime takes two steps forward, and stands next to him. The river is a muted, meandering thing around their ankles, a rippling mirror for the sun. It’s all show, Hajime knows, like the vineyard. Oikawa brought him here to make a point. The forest creaks around them. He waits for Oikawa to open his mouth and make it, but he doesn’t. The silence stretches.

“When I was laughing yesterday—” Hajime begins, just to fill the quiet, and instantly regrets it. How is he supposed to explain that, the hysterics of the sky? That Oikawa has owned blue, forever, and that it’s a cruel absurdity that he can’t articulate. The river continues to slip forwards around them. It’s cold over Hajime’s feet. Hajime doesn’t finish his sentence.

“Why are you here?”

And Hajime winces. Oikawa has been far too kind to him, far too graceful; it’s cruel of Hajime to draw it out long enough that the inevitable question is wet and cracked when it finally comes. How long has it been simmering, there, while Oikawa smiles at him?

Hajime takes another step forward, does not look at Oikawa. He can supply the rest of the question himself, as he stares down at the swirling image of his own feet. _Why are you here, if you didn’t want to see me? If you told me not to come to California?_

Hajime feels a breath enter himself of its own accord. Because he did want to see him, he thinks. Because he’s a bat, he thinks, unseeing, or a bird, who flies home only on dead-reckoning. Because his magnetic north is Oikawa. Because seven years apart nearly killed him. Because stumbling blind, drunk, stupid, through the dark, he would always be able to find him. Because Oikawa’s is the first face that he saw. Because Oikawa is the first thing that he remembers. Because Oikawa is the first color he learned how to name. Because the sky is always blue.

But— Hajime has never been good, with words, and staring down blind into the light-spray of the water, he knows they’ll catch in his throat. Instead he does what his body tells him to do, which is crouch down, and stick his hands into the river like a child. He feels his heart pound against his knees when he balls himself up, feels the cold rush all the way down the tips of his fingers, the backs of his fingernails. They’re twenty-six. A warm Argentinian morning is taking place.

Hajime risks a look up at Oikawa. Who stands there, towering. His face is unreadable and perfect.

“When you—” It comes out too loud, when it finally comes. Hajime has to stop himself, and start the sentence over again. “When you called me, in April, and said your sister was in Pasadena.”

Oikawa waits before speaking. “Yeah.”

Hajime’s heart hammers. “You asked if you should swing by.”

“I—” Behind Oikawa, a bird flees the underbrush at the bank. “I did.”

“I said I was gonna get back to you on that.”

Oikawa stares, silent.

“And—” Hajime has to choke down a years-backlog of panic. All the versions of this that did not make it out. “I never did,” he says. His heart is hammering against his chest. Against his knees. It’s going to split him through. “So, I thought I should. That’s why I’m here.”

“You— thought that you should what?”

“That I should get back to you on that.”

Oikawa stares. The soft trickle of water over their ankles. Over Hajime’s hands. Over the space between them. “. . . And?”

“Yes. You should swing by.”

Oikawa’s lips part, just so. From where Hajime’s crouching, the sun cuts over him at a crooked angle, over his shoulder, his chest, scattering his shadow. The sky is blue, behind him, and Hajime gets to watch, as it happens on his face. 

Hajime doesn’t deserve forgiveness. Or mercy. He gets to watch, as Oikawa acts it on him.

“That’s why you—” Oikawa says, and then he’s gone, because he’s a blur, the brilliant suggestion of a grin, and Hajime’s being pushed over into the water. It’s a sweet wall of cold, and Hajime hears himself yelp, but he reaches out, and Oikawa’s there and his fist is in the fabric of Oikawa’s shirt, and Oikawa’s coming down with him, chased by the sound of his own pealing laughter. “You came to Argentina to—” and the rest of the sentence is smothered as Oikawa is bowled over, and then Hajime is bowled over in turn. They surface on their knees in the chest-deep shallows, dripping and water-plastered. Oikawa can barely speak through his laughter; Hajime can barely see through his watery-eyed grin. “You came to Argentina to tell me that—” the rest of that sentence is lost, too, when Hajime throws himself at him again. When Oikawa falls back Hajime follows, and in the next film-frame Hajime’s got him in his arms, and they’re eighteen, a shade of ocean-glare, because Oikawa’s shouting laughter into Hajime’s chest, and Hajime’s got his cheek pressed against the wet crown of his head, and they’re both gasping, laughing, each reaching helplessly for the other.

  
  


()()()

  
  


When they’re twenty-seven, Hajime is laying in the flat-mowed lawn at the center of Irvine’s campus. His apartment is a dozen blocks away, and he graduated last year, but that doesn’t matter, because he’s here on purpose.

_It’s between Rowland Hall and Mcgaugh. You can read English. And no one’s on campus before 9:00, ‘Kawa, you’ll be fine._

Hajime can feel every atom in his body. He’s a child, and it’s a Sunday, and he’s in the dew-stained grass, letting the moisture crawl up into the fabric of his shirt. He’s a teenager, in his backyard, breathing up into the night-canopy. He’s winded on the floor of a school gymnasium.

Hajime has lived in California for almost a decade. Today he woke up there for the first time.

He lays, and doesn’t move, and balances on the whetted edge of sleep. Enough of the morning has gone by that his coffee cup is cold where it sits on the ground, loosely ringed by his hand. Hajime spent his afternoons on this lawn as an undergraduate student, paging through textbooks, diving for frisbees, trying devotedly to forget. Now he stares into the darkness of his eyelids. A small voice suggests that Tooru isn’t going to come; Hajime smiles at it.

He spends an age pulling apart the distant footsteps he can hear. He guesses uselessly at the time, does not check his phone. And when the right footsteps come, he pretends he does not recognise them, until they arrive at his feet and then stop, and he can’t pretend anymore. He’s a live wire. He doesn’t let himself peek. He is so vulnerable that he can’t help but grin. Time is left to spin on its axis, for a moment.

“You know, you could have met me at the airport.”

Hajime barks out a laugh. He is helpless. So far gone. He keeps his eyes shut, to grant himself one more second of it, the not-knowing. “Well,” he begins, and then he opens his eyes.

Tooru stands over him. Outlined against that sky-blue. Haloed in blister-bright. Reality is so glossy at the edges that his smile is difficult to see, at first; Hajime squints through the graininess until it’s his. Hajime swears it’s the first thing he’s ever seen.

“I wanted to see you here,” Hajime says. 

“Right.”

And then Tooru’s on his knees beside him. For a second Hajime is left to stare up into the glaze of the Californian sky. The last thing he thinks, before Tooru leans down and kisses him, is that it’s the loveliest blue he’s ever seen.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fic for the lovely @/middlemistreds on twitter, whose prompt was the song "hoax" by taylor swift, specifically the line "no other shade of blue but you." can you tell that i got really into it? i haven't done this much CSS coding since high school. thank you for letting me paint a portrait of these boys again, in a hundred different shades of blue.
> 
> once i make the playlist for this fic, the link will be put [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1eG62YBDs6l3MKd0accyy7?si=a9jw-T-ETtODlypJsWExTQ)!
> 
> a massive, thundering thank you to sarge, who acted as my first-ever beta reader on this beast, and guided me through the dark, out into that blistering blue light again. and, if you don't know-- my name is june, i'm 18, i'm from new york, and here's my [twitter](https://twitter.com/summersugawara), come say hi!


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